Rich Lowry: Sorry, Everyone — Oswald Still Acted Alone

Rich Lowry at National Review offers a piece debunking presidential assassination conspiracies and states that he believes that L. Harvey Oswald alone murdered President Kennedy. (I agree). 

A left-wing conspiracy theory migrates right. 

All we need to know about the Deep State, we supposedly learned when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. 

In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, Sean Davis of the Federalist wrote on X that we needed investigations “to see who in the Biden regime knew about this and either allowed it to happen . . . or made it happen. They did it to Kennedy, and his brother, and they just tried to do it to Trump.” 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link: 

Kennedy Assassination Conspiracy Theories: Oswald Acted Alone | National Review

You can also read my Crime Beat column on the Kennedy assassination via the below link:

Paul Davis On Crime: My Crime Beat Column: A Look Back At The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy, The Crime Of The 20th Century 

Biden Is Badly Fumbling The US Pullout From Afghanistan

Rich Lowry offers his take on Biden’s pullout of Afghanistan in his column at the New York Post.

Barely a day passes without news of more Taliban gains in Afghanistan. Perhaps the Afghan government and its forces will prove more resilient than many expect, but if the country continues its slide toward chaos or, worse, the Taliban rapidly take Kabul, President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw a residual US force will look like an amateurish, unforced error by a man who prides himself on his foreign-policy experience and acumen.

With his top military leadership opposed and credible warnings that Kabul could fall within months after a withdrawal, Biden went ahead with it anyway, on the basis of what an aide has called “his gut.”

So far, indications are that the president would have been better off heeding his military advisers than his viscera.

The Afghan war has, of course, stretched on for two decades and become a holding action satisfying to no one. But the cost to the United States of sustaining 3,500 troops in the country without losing anyone in combat for more than a year hasn’t been high compared with the entirely plausible downside of Islamist extremists allied with al Qaeda sweeping to power again in ­Afghanistan.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Biden is badly fumbling the US pullout from Afghanistan (nypost.com) 

Just When We Need Public Safety, Dem Elites Have Alienated Cops Nationwide

 Rich Lowry at the New York Post offers his take on cops and crime:

WANTED: Trained security professionals to deal with ­elevated levels of crime and mayhem at risk to their own life and limb, while getting called racist oppressors and potentially thrown under the bus by elected ­officials.

This has become the de facto employment notice for police around the country, and, unsurprisingly, cops and potential cops don’t find it particularly enticing. Why would they?

America’s cities are feeling the effects of a year’s long experiment in what would happen if political and media elites celebrated a movement based on the idea that police are racist goons, excused rioting and explaining away spiraling crime and made it clear to cops that if they make a mistake, they will, at the very least, ­become instantly infamous.

The experiment hasn’t gone well.

Portland, Ore., has been a veritable research lab for this experiment. The latest blow to the city is the mass resignation of the Portland Police Bureau’s Rapid Response Team, which is responsible for policing protests in the city — a challenging, endless and literally thankless job.

Rioting has become part of the fabric of urban life in Portland, where demonstrators have been doing battle with cops nearly ­every other night since the death of George Floyd.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

Just when we need public safety, Dem elites have alienated cops (nypost.com) 

Rich Lowry: No, Edward Snowden Doesn’t Remotely Deserve A Pardon From President Trump

Rich Lowry offers his take on a pardon for Edward Snowden in his column at the New York Post. 

No one will ever accuse President Trump of being overly careful in his exercise of his pardon power. 

So it makes sense that advocates of Edward Snowden, the man responsible for the most damaging classified leak in US history, are mounting a last-minute push to get the president who pardoned Sheriff Joe and Roger Stone to issue his most outrageous and indefensible pardon yet.

It’s a transpartisan alliance. Glenn Greenwald, Snowden’s journalistic partner and foremost advocate, has, of course, been banging the drum. Rose McGowan has urged Trump to be “punk as f - - -” and pardon Snowden in defiance of “DC Cult Leaders a k a politicians” who “hate the truth.” 

Renegade Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is on board, as are libertarian Trump loyalists Rand Paul and Matt Gaetz. 

As Trump’s presidency winds down and his clout on Capitol Hill diminishes, his sweeping power to grant clemency will be even more alluring to him, and he said over the summer that he’s considering a Snowden pardon. 

If the pardon can be sold to Trump as a way to stick it to the Deep State on his way out the door, anything is possible. Why go to the trouble of firing CIA Director Gina Haspel or FBI Director Christopher Wray if he can signal his contempt for their ilk by bringing a bête noire of the US national-security apparatus in from the cold with a stroke of his pen? 

Working for a National Security Agency contractor, Snowden stole massive amounts of classified material and began sharing it with journalists in 2013. When the Justice Department filed criminal charges, he fled to Russia, which kindly provided him asylum and then permanent residency. 

Snowden is a self-styled whistle­blower. He says he was motivated by his constitutional qualms about an NSA bulk-data-collection program and his disgust with official deceptions about the program. 

None of this holds up. If Snowden wanted to be a genuine whistleblower, he could have pursued concerns about the NSA program through lawful avenues, instead of fleeing the country and purloining so many documents that authorities still can’t be sure how much he stole. 

…The Snowden disclosures were much more wide-ranging than the NSA program, in fact so wide-ranging that it’s almost impossible to keep track. 

It’s also naive to believe that Snowden was allowed to make a home in Vladimir Putin’s Russia without the government exploiting his trove of secrets. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

No, Edward Snowden doesn’t remotely deserve a pardon from President Trump (nypost.com) 

You can also read my Washington Times piece on Snowdon via the below link:

Paul Davis On Crime: Edward Snowden's True Permanent Record: My Washington Times Piece On NSA Leaker Edward Snowden 

Protesters, Beware: Americans Adore The Flag

Rich Lowry in his column in the New York Post cautions those protesting against the flag and the national anthem.

Old Glory is almost certainly the most honored flag in the world.

The late political scientist Samuel Huntington marveled at its place in our national life: We pledge allegiance to it. The national anthem celebrates it. An incredibly elaborate code stipulates how it’s displayed, handled and maintained. It even has its own holiday.

“Since the Civil War,” Huntington wrote, “Americans have been a flag-oriented people. The Stars and Stripes has the status of a religious icon and is a more central symbol of national identity for Americans than their flags are for peoples of other nations.”

The NFL players who kneel during the national anthem — a phenomenon that increased exponentially after President Trump colorfully demanded they stand — are disrespecting the most potent and enduring national symbol of the most patriotic nation on earth.

Not only are they wrong to do so, they aren’t delivering the devastating rebuke to Trump they may imagine.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://nypost.com/2017/09/25/protesters-beware-americans-adore-the-flag/ 

Julian Assange Is Still A Creep

Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, believes that Julian Assange is still a creep, despite his WikiLeaks broadsides against Hillary Clinton

If Julian Assange plays this right, he just might score an invitation to CPAC next year. 

The notorious WikiLeaks founder would have to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference remotely because he is still holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, avoiding a rape investigation in Sweden and fearing extradition to the United States for his malicious exposure of state secrets. 

But, surely, the details could be worked out.Assange is now treated as a respectable figure by some elements of the right because he detests Hillary Clinton and promises to torpedo her campaign with new email exposures. Never mind that he has done everything within his power to damage the interests of the United States, in league with his quasi-ally, Vladimir Putin’s Russia. 

Rarely has “strange new respect” been stranger. It’s like conservatives embracing Kim Philby, the infamous British double agent who defected to the Soviet Union in the 1960s, if he promised to produce damaging information about LBJ before the 1964 election. Or welcoming Philip Agee, the anti-CIA activist from the 1970s who was allied with Russian and Cuban intelligence, if he demonstrated enough hostility to Jimmy Carter. 

The enemy of my enemy (or more properly, my domestic political opponent) can still be a reprehensible creep, and that’s what Assange is.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439854/julian-assange-hillary-clinton-despite-his-exposing-clinton-conservatives-should 

Note: The above photo of Julian Assange was taken by Espen Moe.

Lowry: In Cuba To Make "History," Obama Stands In The Shadow Of Tyranny

Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, offers his take on President Obama's visit to Cuba in his column in the New York Post.

President Obama inadvertently found the perfect photo op for his Cuba visit at a wreath-laying ceremony at the José Marti Memorial in Havana.

A news photo at Revolution Square caught Obama standing together with American and Cuban officials with an enormous mural of the iconic revolutionary Che Guevara looming over his shoulder on the adjacent Ministry of the Interior building.

Che, of course, is ubiquitous on dorm-room walls and T-shirts in the United States and a hero of the Cuban revolution. He also was a coldblooded killer who set up the Cuban gulag and presided over summary executions of political prisoners. (Trials were, per Che, “an archaic bourgeois detail.”) No doubt, he would have been astonished at the Yanqui president coming to Revolution Square to pay his respects — and exceedingly pleased.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link: 

http://nypost.com/2016/03/22/in-cuba-to-make-history-obama-stands-in-the-shadow-of-tyranny/

American Sniper, American Hero

Rich Lowry's column in the New York Post covers the success of the new Clint Eastwood/Bradley Cooper film American Sniper.  

Clint Eastwood's new movie, “American Sniper,” marks the return of the American war hero.

Heroism on the battlefield had never gone away, of course, far from it (witness the Medals of Honor awarded for acts of extraordinary valor in Iraq and Afghanistan). But the classic war hero is more than just brave or fierce. He is famous and almost universally acclaimed. On top of his battlefield exploits, he is a cultural phenomenon.

That is what “American Sniper” unquestionably makes of Chris Kyle. The late Navy SEAL sniper had already written a best-selling memoir and was known as “The Legend” within the military for his record number of confirmed kills during four tours in Iraq. The success of the movie, where he is played by Bradley Cooper, also means he will be remembered as a larger-than-life figure. Such is the power of the silver screen.

... All of this is profoundly disquieting to the left, which has so much sway in Hollywood. It hates and distrusts the idea of the war hero, believing it smacks of backwardness and jingoism. Its notion of compelling war movies were the tendentiously anti-war flops “Green Zone,” “Stop-Loss” and “In the Valley of Elah.” Its reaction to “American Sniper” has been to belittle the movie and smear Chris Kyle.

Actor Seth Rogen compared “American Sniper” to the Nazi propaganda film featured in the movie “Inglourious Basterds.” Director Michael Moore tweeted that he’d been taught to consider snipers cowards. Kyle “was a hate-filled killer,” according to The Guardian, which also deems him “a racist who took pleasure in dehumanizing and killing brown people.”

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://nypost.com/2015/01/19/americans-love-war-heroes-despite-what-hollywood-liberals-think/

The Ferguson Shooting: The Inconvenient (And Tragic) Truths

Rich Lowry offers a column in the New York Post on the facts concerning the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

The bitter irony of the Michael Brown case is that if he had actually put his hands up and said don’t shoot, he would almost certainly be alive today.

His family would have been spared an unspeakable loss, and Ferguson, Mo., wouldn’t have experienced multiple bouts of rioting, including the torching of at least a dozen businesses the night it was announced that Officer Darren Wilson wouldn’t be charged with a crime.

Instead, the credible evidence suggests that Michael Brown — after a petty act of robbery at a local business — attacked Wilson when the officer stopped him on the street. Brown punched Wilson when the officer was still in his patrol car and attempted to take his gun from him.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://nypost.com/2014/11/26/the-inconvenient-and-tragic-truths/

Meet The Mother Of Thanksgiving

Rich Lowry at the New York Post offers a column on the beginnings of the Thanksgiving holiday.

It was 150 years ago that Sarah Josepha Hale gave us Thanksgiving as we know it.

The influential editor was the best friend Thanksgiving ever had.

We’re accustomed, in a more jaded and secular age, to wars on various holidays; Hale waged a war for Thanksgiving. For years, she evangelized for nationalizing the holiday by designating the last Thursday of November for it to be celebrated annually across the country.

Besides plugging for Thanksgiving in her publication, Godey’s Lady’s Book, she wrote Presidents Taylor, Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan about it before hitting pay dirt with Abraham Lincoln.

On Oct. 3, 1863, Lincoln urged his fellow citizens to observe the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://nypost.com/2013/11/25/meet-the-mother-of-thanksgiving/

Note: The above DoD photo shows U.S. sailors aboard ship lining up for Thanksgiving "Chow."

The Kennedy Conspiracy In Plain Sight

Rich Lowry at National Reviews offers a column on the Kennedy assassination.

For all these years, they’ve hidden the truth about the Kennedy assassination.

It didn’t require a conspiracy. It just took repeating a falsehood until it became conventional wisdom. The myth about the Kennedy assassination is that President John F. Kennedy, at great personal risk, traveled to Dallas, aka the City of Hate, and was somehow murdered by an atmosphere of intolerance. The truth is that he was shot by a Communist. 

... In a news report, Timesman Manny Fernandez writes of the “painful, embarrassing memories of the angry anti-Washington culture that flourished here 50 years ago — and now seems a permanent part of the national mood.”

Get it? The rancid political culture of Dallas that was responsible for the death of Kennedy lives on today in the Tea Party, which needs to be stopped before it kills again.

There are at least two problems with all this. The first is that cities don’t kill people. Neither does political hostility. There was plenty of kookery, racism, and ugliness in Dallas circa 1963 — and much derision and abuse of Kennedy — but none of those things picked up a rifle and shot the president of the United States.

The second — and amazingly enough, saying it still carries a subversive hint of revisionism — is that Oswald was a thoroughgoing Communist.

You can read the rest of the column via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/364562/kennedy-conspiracy-plain-sight-rich-lowry

Radical Islam, Once Again

Rich Lowry at the National Review offers a good piece on the Boston Marathon bombers and radical Islam.

We are in the midst of the least-suspenseful investigation ever launched by American law enforcement. Hundreds of investigators are seeking leads around the world to discover the motive of the Boston Marathon bombers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

This probe is considered a foray into the unknown, and perhaps the unknowable. “Do you have any clearer idea,” the host of Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer, asked Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, “of what the motive of these two young men was?” Patrick replied, “Not yet, Bob, and it’s hard for me and for many of us to imagine what could motivate people to harm innocent men, women, and children in the way that these two fellows did.” 

Yes, what could ever possess a nice chap who was posting jihadist videos on YouTube to go wrong? How could the older brother Tamerlan, suspected by the Russian government of radicalism and interviewed by the FBI at Moscow’s urging, get mixed up in a terror plot? Who would have thought that Tamerlan, known for haranguing people at the local mosque for their insufficient zeal, might lead his brother on a violent rampage? When has it happened before that young Muslim men beholden to an extreme ideology have visited mayhem and murder on innocents?

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/346349/radical-islam-once-again

Questions For Gun Controllers

Rich Lowry at the National Review asks gun controllers some good questions.

In the wake of the Newtown massacre, a call has gone up for a conversation about our gun laws. To that end, here are questions for advocates of gun control who are pushing for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, among other new restrictions, to address school shootings.

 

What’s the functional difference between an assault weapon and a semiautomatic rifle? You do understand that the answer is “nothing”? An assault weapon is not an automatic weapon. It is semiautomatic like most guns now sold in the United States, i.e., it fires every time the trigger is pulled. What sets it apart is its scary-looking features.

What’s more powerful, the Bushmaster .223 used by Adam Lanza in his slaughter or the average deer-hunting rifle? If the answer is the average deer-hunting rifle — indeed, many states ban the Bushmaster .223 for deer hunting because it is too weak — will you attempt to ban them, too?
What gun law would have stopped Newtown? Please be specific.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/336528/questions-gun-controllers-rich-lowry

Philadelphia Mayor Nutter's Call

Rich Lowry, columnist and editor of National Review, wrote an interesting column about Philadelphia Mayor Nutter, who blasted the wild kids in Philly who went on the rampage in flash mobs.

I live in South Philadelphia and I'm not a particular supporter of the Mayor, but I liked that he took a public stand and like comedian Bill Cosby, had the courage to blast both the wild kids and their parents.

Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia was true to his word when he took to the pulpit at Mount Carmel Baptist church and prefaced his remarks: "I'm going to say some things this morning that I know from time to time many of you think, but may not say. They will not be PC."

He proceeded to unloose a 25-minute speech that must rank among the most brutally forthright calls for personal responsibility and adult authority that an elected official has ever delivered in these United States.

You can read the rest of Rich Lowry's column via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/274391/mayor-nutter-s-call-rich-lowry

Don't Rewrite Mark Twain

I agree with Rich Lowry, no one should rewrite Mark Twain.
*
Lowry, a syndicated columnist and editor of National Review, wrote a column about Twain and the new edition of Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that replaced the "offensive" words from the text.
*

You can read Lowry's column via the link below:

*

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/256555/don-t-rewrite-mark-twain-rich-lowry

Yes, America Is The Greatest Country Ever

I agree with Rich Lowry. America is clearly the greatest country ever.

Lowry, a syndicated columnist and the editor of National Review, explains why in his column.

You can read his column via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/256125/yes-greatest-country-ever-rich-lowry

America's First Christmas

If you believe our country has insurmountable problems today, it might be good to consider the tough times we had in the beginning of our history as a nation when we were fighting the most powerful country on earth.

Rich Lowry, a syndicated columnist and editor of National Review, wrote a column on America's first Christmas and how we reversed our fortunes in the Revolutionary War.

You can read the column via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/255792/america-s-first-christmas-rich-lowry

Assange the Anti-American

"President Obama insisted that America’s adversaries hated his predecessor, not this country. Julian Assange begs to differ," wrote Rich Lowry, the syndicated columnist and editor of National Review.

Lowry wrote an interesting column about how Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who has leaked scores of American military and diplomatic documents, hates America.

You can read Lowry's column via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/254095/assange-anti-american-rich-lowry